The exceeding qualities of murder. Violence and death among the Latin American street groups in Milan

Abstract

This paper proposes an interpretation on violence and crime among the Latin American youth groups in Milan. The expression “street groups” is here used to describe the tendency of young people to group together without portraying them as criminals or adopting strict definition criteria.

The paper aims to identify the different meanings that may be attributed to violent action in the context considered. Violence is investigated as a constituent part of the processes of individual and group identity building and of status acknowledgment. Furthermore, violence is examined in connection with the interaction dynamics that leads to escalation. Elements such as the relationship with the territory and the different ways of socializing and acting in public places are stressed as factors that contribute to the escalation of violence.

Murder is represented as an event that exceeds this kind of relations, rather than an event naturally inscribed in the dynamics of street violence. The paper proceeds from the reconstruction of the murder of an Ecuadorean young man (a member of a street group) to detect five exceeding qualities of murder: the perpetrators’ express purpose; the individual responsibility; the group responsibility; the individual time; the perpetrators’ identities.